Brokedown Palace
by Word Ninja
Summary: Memory. It's a lifetime in the space of a blink.  A short JxB one shot. AU AH, rated M for cursing and dark-ish content.


BROKEDOWN PALACE

_**Strange Power, I know not what thou art,**_

_**Murderer or mistress of my heart.**_

_**I know I'd rather meet the blow**_

_**Of my most unrelenting foe**_

_**Than live-as now I live-to be**_

_**Slain twenty times a day by thee.**_

_-from the poem To Memory by M. E. Coleridge_

_Blink_

The first time she'd watched Jasper play on stage (sweat catching light like diamonds on his body, his shirt long since discarded to the heat, pink and red and blue stage lights reflected through his dirty blonde hair) she'd thought _disco angel pretty _and laughed, dancing and laughing in the crush of bodies and sounds. He'd seen her laugh and smiled back at her and the entire universe was humming with perfection...

_Blink_

Late evening light filtering through the garage windows, the heavy haze of smoke floating blue and graceful in the air, lying yellow and dank on the walls. Jasper's guitar spilling sweets sounds for endless hours, mixing with his bourbon voice and the sounds of Alice or Rose laughing, all tinkling bells and husky blues...

_Blink_

His blue eyes like icebergs, hiding so much beneath the surface of his calm unruffled seas, heavy lids closing moments before his lips met hers and everything was love love love...

_Blink_

The weight of Renee's old wedding dress anchoring her bare feet in the sand as she watches him turn towards her and she wasn't worried about fainting anymore because he was looking at her, _seeing_ her, and forever suddenly didn't seem long enough...

_Blink_

A glass hits the wall and shatters the silence that suffocated them both for months, the dirty jagged pieces strewn across the floor and it looks just like she feels inside because there is no fix for this, no bandage of Jasper that can fix this Bella and the darkness finally comes, she lets it take her with a sigh...

_Blink_

_Blink_

_Blink_

Time has passed, or maybe it hasn't, because she only sees the shards of pain on the bottom of her heart and not even one of them has healed itself back into place. The smoke from her forgotten cigarette floats lazily without beauty. Nothing is beautiful anymore and everything is nothing. She doesn't taste the harsh burn of cheap liquor; doesn't see the way her lank hair lies on her too-thin shoulders or the sallow skin there. She doesn't smell the dusty threadbare blanket she's taken to wearing around her all day, or hear the sound of footsteps approaching the door of her cracker box apartment.

_Blink_

It's been weeks. Months. Lifetimes. She drove away and left herself, her soul, her everything on the front stoop of the house they'd sworn to make a home. She had left, but he hadn't stopped her. When his voice didn't cry out her name, when his hand didn't stop hers on the car door, when his body turned from hers as she pulled down the driveway... he hadn't stopped her. He'd been leaving too. Staying in the house that would never be a home, but leaving her as surely as she was leaving him.

_Blink_

Her chewed nails and cracked hands didn't register anymore than the fire she poured down her throat straight from the bottle. The crash as she missed the table and it hit the floor almost broke through, but it was too close, too near the sound of the breaking glass he'd thrown... It was the sound of the beginning. The beginning of the end.

_Blink_

The shadows on the floor grew long and changed sides (_everything changes sides you stupid girl, how could you have believed in forever and ever and happily ever after, there's nothing ever after, this palace is brokedown, this princess is no more_) and Bella sat immobile on her ratty second hand futon.

_Blink_

_Blink_

_Blink_

_Knock_

_Blink_

_Knock_

_Knock_

_Knock knock knock knockknock**knockKNOCKKNOCK**_

Her eyelids were too heavy and maybe this time they would just learn to stay down because there was nothing good on the other side of them. Someone was pounding on the door and she'd have to leave to get another bottle but her shoes were by the door and the world was out there just waiting to knock her down, knock her back, knock knock knock.

Someone was knocking on her door. How long had they been there and when would they finally leave? She let her eyelids drift down again, but before she could disappear something charged the air like lightening in the second before it strikes.

_No no no nonononononono_

"Bella?"

_No no no_

"Bella please..."

_No no no_

"Bella. Bella let me..._damnit_."

_No no no... yes_

_YES YES YES_

The knocking stopped, the universe stopped, the door was opening before her and the whole world was there, bright and lethal and just waiting to take her under again. Her hand was pulling it shut again before she could tell it to but it wouldn't close all the way. Something was stopping her.

_Blink_

There was a hand above hers on the door, long fingers and nails bitten to the quick, every tiny hair standing out like spun gold against skin she could still taste on her tongue. The hand grew into an arm, the sun grew into a searing needle in her eyes, the arm grew into a body...

_Blink_

And there he was, and the shards of her heart cracked into a million more pieces and somewhere someone was sobbing harsh grating gulps of air and tears and her face was wet and it was her. And it was him.

"Bella?"

_No yes no yes no yes yes yes_

_YES_

"I'm sorry."

_YES_

"Come home."

_YES_

"Bella, please. Say something."

**_YES YES YES_**

The air in her lungs was on fire, she was breathing for the first time and home home home and...

_Jasper_

"Jasper."

His eyes, his face, his body were gone behind her crying eyes, just a blur of shape and mass that smelled like home and life and history. Fingers brushed tears from her cheeks, leaving trails of hope and possibility behind.

"Let's go home."

* * *

AN: Thanks to you for reading.

Thank you to JustShireen for her pre-reading genius, and to rameau for being supportive and snarky in equal measure (I love it). To bookjunkie1975, who was forced to read this way too many times, ILY big big. They made this suck less, and if anything still sucks, it's because I didn't listen to their advice.

Go read bookjunkie1975's one shot, Collateral Damage. She wrote it a little while back for the Superhero contest, and I just can't get enough of it. Anything that starts off, "The double life of Renee Swan is the town of Forks worst kept secret..." is awesome. Find it in my favorites.


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